Technology, Visibility, and Changes in Teenage Culture

• In Event: 599 - Section on Children and Youth Paper Session. Peer Cultures of Children and Youth

Abstract

In 1997-1999 I conducted a study of teen culture, the results of which were reported in my book Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids. The study involved extended ethnographic observation in a high school, interviews with students and faculty, and college-student descriptions of their high school status systems. The data were explained using a theory of status relations. Fifteen years later I repeated the study using the same methodology and observing in the same school. This paper focuses on how the new technologies—cell phones, social media sites, apps, etc.—reshaped the kinds of social visibility that were available, which in turn produced changes in teen peer culture. By drawing the theory of status relations and focusing specifically on changes in social visibility, I suggest explanations of such seemingly unrelated things as eye-contact with teachers, an increase in the status of the “popular crowd,” stranger danger, a decline in face-to-face interaction, a decline in the significance of clothing fashions, and the declining significance of teen culture to the maintenance of consumer capitalism. The paper also recognizes that variations in the cultures of local schools and cliques can shape the effects of changes in social visibility.

Author

• Murray Milner, University of Virginia